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Microsoft's Lobbying Priorities: Limiting Open Source
MonkeyDev writes "In the story on cio.com, 'Mr. Gates Goes to Washington', the author says...'Microsoft cared little for politics until the Department of Justice called it a monopoly. Now the company approaches lobbying the way it approaches everything- aggressively-and consequently it dominates the technology policy agenda.' The article outlines Microsoft's power, provides several examples of legislative decisions heavily influenced by the company, and talks about where they are aiming their newly found political clout. 'Microsoft's policy agenda includes issues that many CIOs agree with, notably more government funding for research and development, stronger copyright protection, and free trade in offshore products and services. However, two of Microsoft's policy priorities, limiting the adoption of open-source software and inoculating technology companies from spam liability, stand out as areas wherein what's good for Microsoft may not be good for all CIOs.' Further, 'Microsoft has lobbied particularly hard against open source, helping kill state bills that advocate for open source in Oregon and Texas. Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation, and Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs.'"
If Bill Gates runs for President, I'll be very sad. "We're not a monopoly... but, uh, we will be your rulers! Where do you want to go today?"
- Code Dark
its the other way around, microsoft stifles innovation
Cb..
Microsoft is one of the largest donor in washington. obviuosly they need to do good for stock holders money. What is good for microsoft is good for stockholders and opensource is not good for microsoft so hey what else would you expect?
god! you know the very people who are writing open source code... these are the individuals that are intrisically motivated to learn and advance the field not for money, etcetera, but for the pure good of advancing a field
In October 2003, when Reynolds first announced plans for the bill, Andrew Wise, a Texas-based Microsoft lobbyist, flew up to Oklahoma to try to convince him that his bill was misguided. Reynolds was surprised that Microsoft, which doesn't make custom software, was interested. He says Wise told him that Microsoft might one day enter the custom software market.
Wow... Does Microsoft plan on entering EVERY market some day? Can't you just see them lobby for or against some legislation for cloning because they may "one day enter the cloning market?"
I think redhat might argue that open source software can be commercial too.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
Closed source does stifle innovation, but would you want to live in a nation where a company's lobbies were not allowed to speak because a vocal minority opposed them.
Ultimately, it is our responsibility to vote into office representatives that respond to our wishes rather than lobbies. If you aren't registered to vote and you are over 18 years old in the US, PLEASE register to vote before the November election. I don't care who you vote for; just VOTE!!!
If you are registered to vote and you don't, you suck.
If you are registered and know people who either aren't registered or don't vote, get them to. A democracy only works when people exercise their ability to effect a change.
Chris
Microsoft has lobbied particularly hard against open source, helping kill state bills that advocate for open source in Oregon and Texas
Sorry, but I fail to see how any bill (Gates or proposed legislation) that advocates in favor of either open or closed source is a good thing. Legislators ought to stick their noses somewhere else then making technology decisions.
Without their fine closed-source innovation, the interweb would never have been possible. And wasn't it nice of them to give their TCP/IP stack to aid BSD development and let everyone else use that browser idea they had?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
As we all know, UNIX was also created by a monopolist corporation, namely AT&T. For decades, AT&T had a deal with Justice Department: we (the people) tolerate your monopoly, you (the corporation) give us back all the technology you develop in your labs, so at least your monopoly serves the public good. That's why AT&T had no choice but distribute early versions of UNIX at a nominal costs to universities and research centres. It looks that 30-40 years ago anyone at least considered the question of "what is good for the public interest". What has changed in America since then?
Why no one with relevant authority even tries to consider a similar deal with Microsoft? The case of AT&T proves that dealing with monopolists does not have to be necessarily a binary option, either we consider you a monopolist and forcibly split or we give you carte blanche. You can tolerate a monopolist corporation if you strike a good deal for common good - like in this case, for example, "OK, keep on your monopoly on MS Windows, but open the bloody source code so people can write their own security patches, give copies freely to education & research, do something to ensure cross-platform compatibility of data files and while we are at it, what about a good Age Of Empires sequel?".
Some politicians have budgets to meet and act accordingly. For instance, state legislatures who have to pay for drug plans are pushing to be able to import drugs from Canada. The FDA, which doesn't have to pay for anybody's drugs, is against it.
The trick is to have the politicians with the power to set the rules having to bear the cost of the rules that they create.
If we can make our politicians feel more responsible for the cost of commercial licenses that the government has to buy, then we will see much greater uptake of open source by governments. In Europe the politicians are juggling software patents vs. the cost of paying Microsoft. If it weren't for Ireland (a Microsoft client state), software patents would be dead in Europe.
The bottom line: Make the politicians responsible for the damage they create.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation.
If this is the case then why such a big PR/FUD Campaign against opensource? If microsoft products are so "innovative" then then will out sell the free alternatives that don't "innovate" won't they???
It getting rather funny microsoft running the "innovative" comment all the time when in my experience (10years ish) the open-source community has been far more innovative. (Hey I hear that I will be able to turn on/off computers using Shorthorn when it is eventually released. I wish linux had a feature like that.. oh..)
Anyway the one good thing about Microsofts FUD campaign against opensource/linux is that it has enabled me to show a number of clients how good Linux is! After all why else would microsoft spend so much trying to convince everyone that microsoft is better. TCO Studies funded by microsoft. Get the facts website with blatently biased results.
So microsoft keep up the fud as it is making me loads of $$$ !
---- There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't
"Where do you want it today."
Nope it's still backwards. The correct format is:
Innovation stifles Microsoft.
I mean; think about all the work Microsoft has to put into 'new features' everytime Apple/*nix/ect shows some innovation.
Come on guys, let's be a little bit more sympathetic to Microsoft from now on and not come up with fresh ideas as often.
Commercial software that which many things of are patented are stopping innovation. History tells us in the time James Watt invented the Steam Engine he patented almost every (little) effort he made on it. The development/innovation of the steam engine for the next 10 years was totally stopped. In one particular region in England where they actually denied patents(-laws) and shared all information about new inventions and innovation the most effort on the steam engine was done. So this is almost the same situation we now have with open source and commercial software, only in another era.
Is that these actions by Microsoft fundementally affect everyone. Open Source makes perfect sense for certain types of infrastructure applications, the Operating System being the best example. Everyone who uses the OS can contribute to its growth in capabilities and maturity. Everyone benefits except the vendors of Operating Systems.
Open Source make especially good sense for governments as well, since they all have similar needs and limited budgets. Contrary to what Microsoft believes, my tax dollars are not intented as a hand out for Bill Gates. I want them used wisely. If Bill Gates wants my money, he can get it by producing software that I purchase willingly, not software that I am forced to pay for by Micrsoft's creative marketing "agreements" with computer vendors.
Now, for all those who are going to scream about how we should all just watch quietly as Microsoft goes about it's business of squeezing us for money... MS is a convicted monopolist. I personally believe that there is no place for a monopoly in a free market economy. It will always result in the devistation of the marketplace, just as MS has. Capital for software development didn't dry up just because of the Dotcom meltdown. It has vanished because no one wants to invest in developing a software product that MS might decide to compete against.
Those of you who are unemployed software engineers, think about this very carefully. MS is part of the reason you are out of work. MS has become the impediment to innovation in our industry, not Open Source.
If you want a good example, just look at Firefox vs. IE. MS stopped development work on IE after they "won" the browser wars. Firefox is quietly taking over the market now by being better, faster, and far more secure. This could only be done by an Open Source project, because we saw what happened to Netscape when they tried to compete against the company that controlled the operating system.
MS should have been broken up. It would have been the healthiest thing for both the stock holders and the software market. The new companies created out of the old Microsoft would eventually be worth far more than the current company is and we'd all see better software being developed as competition heated up again.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
The random quote at the bottom of the page for this article was:
"Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements, sooner or later the product will speak for itself." - Hajime Karatsu
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
Using money to influence government in this way is, in its end result, bribery. But it is different than bribery in that it does not require corrupt politicians.
It requires only politicians who are not all-knowing. Even intelligent, well-intentioned people can be convinced of something if only one side of an argument is heard. This is especially true for a topic as complex as government policy.
Professional lobbying, because it is effectively bribery, needs to be outlawed-- it should be illegal to pay someone to speak to a government representative on your behalf. Instead of hiring lobbyists, companies can ask their employees and shareholders to contact, in their spare time, their representatives. If that is not sufficient, companies can, through advertisement, raise public awareness of their concerns. In this way, the influence of money will move one more step away from government.
Public interests groups, such as environmental and anti-software patent groups will have little problem recruiting volunteer lobbysists, as many of them already do. Such lobbyists, since they are unpaid, would be perfectly legal. Not only will public interest groups be able to lobby almost as effectively as before, but they will also no longer have to compete with highly paid professional lobbying firms.
Sorry, but, why would Mr. Gate want to take such a large cut in his polical influence and pay?
...change a light bulb?
None, as its a hardware problem. But it requires a room full of MS programmers to figure that out.
So how many MS hardware engineers does it take to Change a light bulb?
None, as it is a environment specialist problem. But it takes a building full of hardware engineers to figure that out.
How many environment specialist does it take to change a light bulb?
None as it is a maintance problem, but it takes a complex full of environment specialist to figure that out.
So how many maintance personel does it take to change a light bulb?
One and Shes polish, but first she has to get purchasing to order a light bulb.
How hard is it for her to get purchasing to order a light bulb?
harder than it is to just take a light buld from some hotel room or other business and use it instead.
Now thats innovation and job creation.
Point being, MS does not innovate, so how whould they know what innovation is?
Correction, what is their definition of innovation?
The light bulb in someone elses building.
Yes, it is in the interests of M$ to influence Washington and local governments. They want to make a profit, and in the spirit of unfettered capitalism they will do all they can to do this.
...he company approaches lobbying the way it approaches everything- aggressively-and consequently it dominates the technology policy agenda...
Of course it does. So do the oil companies, the gun manufacturers. To be effective lobbying must be aggressive. Note this doesn't mean in the open air - the most effective lobbying is that done behind closed doors. Done by the most experienced - oil companies are the best example of this - they even got themselves a president! Whether open source is better than M$ is of debate - but the sharholder value maximiser that our economy, and capitalist greed orientated world (though in Soviet Cuba this is the reverse) prevents this debate. Not only is M$ greedy as all corporates are, but it is led by one of the most driven, single minded, power seeking and successful (in this area - where so many try and fail) person in history - perhaps only Ghengis Kahn compares, yet I don't think BillG rapes and murders in the thousands, at least directly. Gay Niggers don't have this problem, nor does Natalie Portman's steaming hot grits... in Japan
With this kind of corporate greed so embedded I don't see how Linux, an OS that _is_ ready for the desktop no matter how much the Apple fanboys (jumping a little late on the *nix bandwagon) say it isn't. A good friend of mine has installed a GNOME network in a local special school, and now all the retarded kids are hacking the Kernal Ruby with sticks attached to their foreheads. Note he did this for free using Gentoo/Debian, and chose not be be a testing clone for Redhat.
I for one hide my petrification and welcome our M$ lobbiest overlords.
--
It is not the commies, the government, the nigger, nor the corporates. It is your paranoia.
"Bashing" Microsoft is like "bashing" the present U.S. government administration. Unless they have spent many hours studying them, those who complain probably don't know one-one-hundredth of the abusiveness.
I've been trying to understand the underlying causes of organizational abusiveness. Partly it seems that rich people often begin to think of themselves as above everyone else. The begin to have a subtle kind of mental breakdown. For them, continuing to think of themselves as superior is like drugs to a crack addict.
The article Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going shows a little of the inability of Microsoft to be a good world citizen. It's old now and needs updating, but it does give a small idea of the breadth and depth of Microsoft abusiveness.
Three movies and 35 books say that the present administration of the U.S. government is extremely corrupt. See the article Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
At present vice-president Dick Cheney is visiting all the states with many undecided voters to tell them that the U.S. is constantly at war, and he and George W. Bush are the best people to lead a war. The U.S. government has engaged in 24 wars since World War 2. The system works by creating fear so rich people can profit.
As former U.S. President and Supreme Commander of Allied Forces General Dwight D. Eisenhower said in a famous speech, beware of the "military-industrial complex". Here's a quote:
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
Another quote:
"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present - and is gravely to be regarded."
If you love the U.S. as much as I do, you will stop worrying about bashing, and you will begin trying to understand the conflicts and begin trying to help the world out of the mess it gets itself in when people don't think deeply.
At present, those who complain about Microsoft are often attacked by people who are uninformed. This delays needed improvements inside Microsoft.
Really, really caring makes you strong.
If you become aware of a particular technological issue that your congresscritters are discussing, WRITE THEM A LETTER, STUPID. If MSFT-centric policies are getting pushed through "in a vacuum," it's because citizens who know better aren't providing the opposing ideas.
As that philosopher guy once said: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil (or silly corporate lobbyists) is that good men do nothing."
Fact is, these "jobs" are ones that do not need doing.
If "open source" provides needed software at lower cost, everyone (and I am looking at you, large wasteful government) should be using it.
The "jobs" and "economic growth" should be used to create software which is not available thru "open source"
Society is not better off when people do un-needed work, or pay more then necessary for goods and service.
"But it's *my* job at risk" I hear you whine.
Too farking bad. Do you remember when ball point pens first came out, and they cost $25? Do you think the craftsmen who made those are still getting paid the same amount to make pens today that wholsale for 20 cents? Where were you when buggy whip makers went bust because people drove cars?
You are buying only made in USA computer parts, right? I mean, you would never buy parts made in other countries, because that would mean that US workers would lose their jobs just so you can buy a PC for less than $6000.
And that would just be UNFAIR!
Hmm, since the current outbreak of Linux on the desktop MS has:
1. launched a massive security sweep of all existing code.
2. released XP service pack2 that defaulted most security settings to reasonably high levels, including turning on the built in firewall.
3. Has resumed actively developing Internet Explorer, even released a popup blocker (about 2 years too late on that one Bill)
Those are the only three things I can think of now but it sounds to me like open source is stimulating innovation here. If Open source is providing MS with tough competition, hence pushing both sides to attempt to innovate more and create high quality products, how is this bad? Are the people in our government that fucking stupid? I mean, they can't be that dumb if they got elected....well, actually (bush...cough bush)
I've read a lot of posts from people who believe innovation in software is dead, I say, don't listen to them, they are not programmers. Simply because the product is the same, doesn't mean there isn't innovation all over the place. Someone might have found a way to make the application 10% faster using some new technique never used before, you never know. Open source is full of these kinds of breakthoughs and our development model ensures that they don't die with the company who created them, they live on through the GPL, being used and reused in many applications until something even better comes along.
Open source is not only innovative in and of itself, it also creates innovative code and makes sure that everyone can get ahold of it.
Damn it man, you almost had it.
Consice statement. Coherent, insightful point. A well written statement.
However, it left me with a taste in my mouth that just said 'bogaboga is a tard', and it was your use of "M$". It's a matter of respect, the same kind of respect you show a shotgun or a pit bull, however much you dislike them.
Now, most of the asshats that say M$ are just that, asshats. You, on the other hand, have mastered punctuation and closing the italic tag.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to just write Microsoft, or, if you are in a rush, MS.
I think I need a new sig here.
Its like this...
.com boom).
MS is currently one step ahead of linux (yes flame all you want, but if linux were ahead more people would use it). They are ahead because windows is easy, and there is a whole bunch of software that doesnt run on linux.
If MS was so worried about OSS then if all they did was make sure they delivered what their customers wanted first, at a fair price, they wouldnt need to worry. OSS would simply never be a justifiable option (when looking from a CIOs perspective).
But MS is often late, at a higher price. If nothing else, OSS keeps MS in check. I would hate to think about a return to the day when MS is the only game in town, and can act accordingly (think of 1999 minus the
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Excuse me? This from the company who is "appropriating" features from Firefox into the next version of IE?
It seems to me that open source developers are the only ones concerned with innovation, because most of the time innovation and profit are mutually exclusive (i.e., upholding the status quo means less work, less dev time, and hence fewer expenses for closed-source operations, especially in the more 'feature-oriented' areas that customers feel they can live without).
Wile I generally don't like the idea of corporate lobbying, what I would be interested in knowing is where IBM is when this is going on? IBM seems pretty damned committed to Open Source, it would seem like they'd be lobbying on the other side of the fence. God knows they have the cash to do it effectively.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
I worked QA for a team developing what could have been the next big thing in Unified Messaging, conversion of any kind of messaging protocol to another for routing to email, fax, cell phones, alphapagers, text-to-speech, etc. There were something like ten developers total during the company's largest point. Due to the company's going out of business during the dotcom burst (despite it not being a dotcom, we had a stupid investor) the software was never quite finished and fell away. It's basically gone now. The perceived value of the intellectual property was just in the wrong place for people to consider it worth the money. Consequently that hard work is gone.
If it had been Open Source there still would have been developers working on it, but it would still exist. When the company went under those developers could have taken this and went elsewhere to show what they had. It could have at least been released to the public so that other companies could take it and adapt it to their needs, hiring programmers in the process.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs.'
You mean after the success of free trade with off shoring there will be many jobs out side right? Glad to see Bill cares about the country more than he does his dinasty==I mean legacy==I mean share holders....ah darn....ssdjh349dg
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Isn't that argument ("only commercial software spurs economical growth"), which seems to be the biggest gun of MS and other entities against Free/Open Source softwares, only the Broken Window Fallacy applied to something else?
I mean, surely they can't be serious. The govt have the choice bewteen paying a lot of money for commercial software, or much much less for free/open source software. The opponent of FOSS says that since they pay more, and people working for companies are earning money and got a job, it spurs the economic growth as opposed to FOSS who supports some people in their basement given nothing back to the economy.
Isn't this bullshit? I mean, if they pay MUCH less for the needed system/software, they have MORE money left afterward, money that can be INJECTED back in the economy in different ways. So, the govt fulfilled their needs PLUS they have more money for the economy, and can spend it anyway they want.
It's WIN/WIN isn't it? With commercial, they get their software at an overinflated price and they inject money ONLY in a specific part of economy and don't have the luxury to choose how to spend it.
Quite frankly any bureaucrat that settles on closed data formats and protocols should be fired for betraying the interests of the government. The government should not be beholden to a particular manufacturer for its information systems.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
The problem is that Open Source Software has been manipulated into the anti-property rights corner. If you have no rights to any of the code you write, then there is no way you can sell it and you go bankrupt.
For OSS to really excel, there simply has to be a mechanism that allows people to get paid for their contributions to innovation.
Open source has the potential of bringing more developers into the software development process...but there needs to be a way for people to protect their investment in the development of the code. Without that piece, politicos like Gates will always be able to come down on it as being anti market.
The idea that people only get paid for installation and not development and that sysadmins will live a dual life installing software during the day for pay and writing code at night is really not tenable. Nor is the idea that software developers will live for extremely sporadic donations. If OSS came with a strong system of structured property rights, then OSS developers would make more money and it would be more exceptible to business types.
This is what happens when the government gets into the business of meddling with the economy. Closed source software does generate more profit and jobs for certain sectors of the economy. Let's face it - the Microsoft business model makes Microsoft more money than the Redhat business model makes Redhat. And the low TCO of linux obviously allows for fewer IT jobs. That closed source may reduce economic efficiency and hurt the economy in the long run doesn't matter to politicians. Microsoft's position makes sense to congressmen used to meddling with economic affairs. This is why the OSS community should place less emphasis on the "free as in speech" dogma and more on how it saves non-technology companies money and help create other non-IT jobs there.
Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs.
Yeah, in the same way that shooting yourself in the foot creates jobs for doctors.
PS, why do some many people insist on framing the debate in terms of commercial softwre versus free software?
It really is proprietary versus Free. Redhat is commercial, SuSE is commercial, the list of Free and commercial software is quite extensive.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Microsoft may be many things, but dumb is not one of them.. They learn from their mistakes and their competetor's victories.
They pretty much minded their own business government-wise until their enemies wined and dined the folks in the beltway and got the feds to go after microsoft for antitrust. So now Sun and Netscape have taught Microsoft that if you spread the wealth around washington you can get things via governmental force that you couldn't normally get in a an open market economy.
It's stark irony that an open source project such as mozilla could suffer thanks to a lesson about lobbying that Microsoft learned from Netscape.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
First amendment, my ass. Let them talk all they want--but make the bribery, a.k.a. campaign contributions, illegal. Money is not speech, it's grease on the gears of corruption.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Example 1:For my sins, I am the maintainer of the YAFFS file system which is used extensively in Linux-based mobile and embedded devices. People have often take YAFFS and add stuff or use it in ways that would not happen if YAFFS was closed. Having people play with and extend YAFFS in ways that I would not have done myself has improved it. YAFFS is designed for NAND flash, when somebody said they want to use it for NOR flash I said "Dumb idea", but the person went ahead anyway and achieved great results. Now a few products are shipping using YAFFS on NOR. In a closed source model that could not have happened.
Example 2: The RML preemptable kernel stuff. RML went and played with preemptable kernel stuff that many people said waas a waste of time (including, if I recall, Linus). When he was done, and could show that it worked, it got included back into the mainstream and the Linux kernel is vastly improved because of this. In a closed source model Linus would have said "Dumb idea, fsck off" and RML would have not been able to "scratch thaat itch" and would not have been able to get past having a cool idea.
Code improves by having different people try out different things. Some are dumb ideas and go nowhere and some are good. Until tried, it is difficult to tell the good from the bad ideas. In closed source, a pre-selection filter prevents people trying ideas. In open source anyone can scratch an itch and try things out, hence open source is more likely to experience breakthroughs than closed source.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The first is when taxes pay for research and programming the code should be public domain. Microsoft, apple, GNU, everyone should be able to take the code and put it in their work, claim copyrights and license it as they like. From there let the various models compete. I dont want to get into trying to legislate licenses.
The second is states should not be able to say you can or can not buy commercial software or open source. I'm not even for favoring one or the other. Let them compete. However, they should be able to say they will only be able to buy software that adhears to standards needed for interoperability between vendor products. So unless the
One thing is for sure. If you start playing politics with Microsoft, you better be ready for the big fight. Its one thing to push for standards which is going to cause enough conflict, but dictating vendors or rejecting vendors based on their biz model is getting into dangerous ground.
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. said on Sunday that it would share the underlying software code for its Office program as part of its efforts to make governments more confident in the security and compatibility of the world's largest software maker's products.[snip]
So I guess the government should limit Office use? (Not that MS is promising open source by any means.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Let's see.. what has Open Source contributed to innovation? TCP/IP, the Internet, DNS, email, newsgroups, networked operating systems, user and system security... and many many more (including revision control and process).
Microsoft wouldn't know innovation if it bit them in the nose. Bill Gates famous line "this whole internet thing is a fad" is one example.. The quote "Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation" - is a joke.
Put simply, one of the greatest problems facing the USA this decade has been the fact that we are rewarding the "duplicator" (Microsoft) more than the true "innovators".
Name ONE innovation Microsoft has introduced...
The OS.. NO (UNIX.. even DOS was stolen)
The windowing system.. NO (Amiga/Xerox/Apple)
Microsoft "Bob".. YES!
Multi-platform/Network based programming language.. NO (Sun Java)
The Webbrowser.. NO (Mozilla/Lynx/Netscape)
Streaming media?.. NO (Real Networks)
The office suite.. NO (Lotus/Word Perfect/etc)
The virus..YES!
The worm.. YES!
Networking.. NO
TCP/IP.. NO
NetBUI.. YES! (yikes!)
Stability and Security.. NO
The BSOD.. YES!
Obscurity.. YES!
hrmm.. not much innovation there... I hope most people realize the emperor has no clothes when it comes to Microsoft speaking about innovation.
As far as money from Open Source.. well, the internet is the single greatest new market this decade.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Hey, Troll-boy, are you saying that mmarket share is based on ease of use, or that open source software keeps you from having a good desktop, or what?
The Apple Macintosh is generally considered the easiest desktop computer to use... even Bill Gates has said as much. But it's got about the same market share as Linux, and it's built on an open-source OS.
So whatever your alleged point is, that should be enough to render it clearly nonsense.
Microsoft's market share is the result of cross-promotion and the application barrier to entry.
And open source software is just as capable of being the base of an excellent product.
Microsoft argues that open source freezes innovation, and Krumholtz says that commercial software alone spurs economic growth and creates jobs.'"
... even innovative!) and we were always trying to think of ways to make computers more fun and useful. Then I think about how far we haven't come in that time, and I wonder how anyone could call that company "innovative." Microsoft is static force, that attempts to milk every single feature and function for the last dregs of profit before they deign to release something a little better. Innovative. Ha.
{sigh} this has reached the point where one wonders how even a professional politician could believe this stuff. Microsoft has done more to hold back the computing industry as a whole than any other single entity, including the Federal Government. Over the past twenty years, I've lost track of the number of way-cool innovative products that I used for a while until suddenly they were gone, because the vendor either a. became a Microsoft "Partner" (euphemism for "death knell") or b. was simply bought out or sued out of existence.
Honestly, I look back almost three decades, to the beginning of the personal computer revolution, and think about the promise the industry held and how excited we all were to be a part of it. Everything we did was new (yes
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I worked with my friendly state delegate, here in Charlottesville, VA, to introduce an OSS bill in the General Assembly in Richmond last February. It did nothing but remind -- not enforce, not require, remind -- the state IT department that there's nothing preventing them from using OSS, should they see fit.
It...uh...ended badly. Microsoft sent out six lobbyists (only one officially from Microsoft, with the rest from Microsoft shell agencies with Bushian names like "Organization for Software Freedom") and shut it down.
We'll try again this year.
-Waldo Jaquith
No. They have a point. The problem is that, right now, it's not quite clear where innovation is actually able to come from:
* Open source projects have trouble innovating, because they don't pay. That means the people who work on them have to make money somewhere else, which means they can't devote 100% of their energy to innovating the open source.
* Commercial projects have just as much trouble innovating, because they HAVE to pay, which means they have to sell. Since the vast majority of users are "alright jack" with the existing functionality of their computer, innovative apps are a hard sell.
It's a kicker. Want to write an innovative art package? You either Open Source it and have it sit idle on SourceForge because it has no prestige and no-one wants to put in the time, or you make it commercial and watch as it fails to sell because everyone already has their copy of Photoshop.
For example...?
.
Let's see.... the internet, the web, email, chat, network-aware windowing systems, DNS, NTP, security systems (like kerberos), and a slew of other network stuff that we take for granted these days.
More recently:
CODA, GNOME Storage (RDBMS-based filesystem), Dashboard (which Microsoft bit off of and calls "implicit query"), Wiki, . .
A *lot* of true software innovation starts in the free software world. Often it's taken, usurped, and out-marketted by commercial vendors (like the case of MS Internet Explorer). That doesn't mean it didn't start as free software.
There are quite a few examples of commercial innovation, too, especially in the case of business software like the various office suites, database query tools, etc. Innovation is not exclusively a free software activity. But I think the GP post was correct: the free software community has demonstrably provided more innovation than Microsoft.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
On a level playing field free software will inevitably wipe the floor with proprietary software. At some point linux or openoffice or whatever becomes good enough and Microsoft's proprietary stuff starts to look too expensive both in terms of money and lock-in. Once alternative file formats and protocols become commonplace Microsoft will have lost much of its power in the marketplace.
To combat this eventuality Microsoft and the entertainment industry push to build DRM into the hardware - CPUs, motherboards, sound systems, all of it. This is really what Longhorn is all about. There will be a thicket of patents walling off the technology, and of course the licenses will not be compatible with free software. Naturally it will be difficult to impossible to get this hardware to be fully operational without access to the specs.
Obviously, most people in the industry will understand what Microsoft is up to and many will not want to go along. So there'll be attempts to sponsor legislation mandating the use of these technologies. I'm sure you can imagine all the FUD from the {RI,MP}AA and their many front groups.
Will Microsoft get away with closing the PC hardware platform? I don't know. But this will be the final showdown between free and proprietary software.
For the record, I think this would be very bad for America.
This is nothing new. As tech companies become large and powerful, they will start influencing government. Companies like Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and others, are some of the largest corporations in USA and hence they will influence govt. The tech industry, and hence the corporations, were small in the past so their power was limited. Other than IBM, very few tech companies would have been considered powerful from the 60's to the 80's.
Influencing govt is nothing new. One just needs to look at how some of the historically large corporations in USA (eg. oil companies), such as ExonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton (aka KBR), and others, have influenced US govt to the point of controlling their military.
As the computer industry, and consequently the corporations, increase in size, theiry lobbying power will increase...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
I don't know exactly what Futurepower meant by that comment, but I will point out that merely having a command prompt is not the same as having a proper CLI environment. While cmd.exe may be slowly gaining some of the serious features of Bash or KSH, that still doesn't make a CLI. Under Unix/Linux, bash (or whatever shell you want to use) is really just a "glue" language. The real power comes from the dozens of filter-type tools in /bin and /usr/bin and being able to combine them in useful ways. Add in hundreds of other tools (e.g the NetPBM graphics programs) and you have a seriously powerful environment.
The power of a Unix-like environment isn't in just having a command-prompt. You have to look at the system as a whole to realise that it's constructed of many simple principles. These principles may seem inconsequential at first, but they all tie together.
We conduct our reprsentative government in a democratic manner. Defense contractors lobbying for more tax payer money to Israel in order to beef up their sales, Monsanto lobbying to stop labeling products organic and Microsoft killing any open-source bill are not in the spirit of democracy where we each have equal say through our representatives.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
In mathematical terms, on the innovation = f(t) scale, the curves are about to cross.
I think the curves crossed long ago: X11, BSD, Mach, X toolkits, Tcl/Tk, etc. came out long before equivalent Windows technologies. However, because Microsoft set the de-facto standards for appearance and behavior, open source has had to spend a lot of time backfitting its own innovation into a framework that the mainstream user, who is used to Microsoft software, understands.
Someone has already mentioned apache, but the Internet itself was developed mainly in an open mindset.
What you don't see is the thousands of small utilities used inside companies that come from open-source. These utilities are not distributed to the public, so they are not affected by the GPL, but this cannot be done with closed source.
Also I can't think of anything that Microsoft made that was innovative, that they didn't steal and use their monopoly power to kill the original, that was usually better.
I'm running gnome and have lots of utilities that I don't have on MS. Some of these are available from third parties, but the quality is not as good. One main example is the multiple desktop. I use six different desktops to bounce around different projects that I work on in one day. This has helped me tremendously. Grant you, that this is old, but I first saw this with fvwm and that was opensource. Maybe it was copied from something else but that was not were I've seen it. I've found many utilities more easy to use in the opensource arena than the closed source.
Also where do you think IE came from? the same place as Mozilla, which is derived from Netscape which was derived from Mosaic which is another innovative opensource product. If all you look at is Word, Powerpoint, Excel and Photoshop, I can see you having this view, but there is a lot more out there that comes from opensource, but since it doesn't have a logo on it, you just don't see it.
Open your eyes.
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
There was a time when Microsoft refused to lobby, or they lobbied very little, and all that got them was several slap downs from the governement, and articles from industry leaders telling them to grow up, to learn how to play with the big boys. I guess they listened to those articles, and they realised that they'd never continue to survive without extensive and aggressive lobbying. This article isn't about how evil microsoft is, it's about the failure of the current political system.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
Monopolies lead to lobbying.
Lobbying leads to corruption.
Corruption leads to the dark side.
use Linux. Advanced it is.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
I also agree with Stallman on a lot of things, actually, I believe we'd agree about the dangers of treating intellectual property rights like physical property rights, and about software patents and copyrighted interfaces. Obviously we both favor open systems and interoperating software, and open source.
But... I believe that competition is essential to the continued development of software systems, and that the open source model doesn't automatically lead to better software in all areas. Also, he seems to have an ambiguous position on interface copyrights: he believes that the GPL should apply to APIs as well as code, and I believe that this pretty much violates everything the LPF is about.
I hardly think that he was tactically wrong: his tactics were obviously tremendously successful, and that is after all the point of a tactical decision. The results, though, are that people consider RMS and the GPL to be synonymous with free software. I've talked to lots of software developers who used the GPL who never considered that there might be an alternative.
And find it hard to see this as an accident. It's implicit in the GNU Manifesto, and explicit in the preamble to the GPL where he argues the GPL is the only way to license software you want to remain free. What else does this mean but that all "free software" everywhere should adopt the GPL, either voluntarily or by incorporation into GPL-covered code. It's not just a matter of producing his free operating system, his goal was for his free operating system to replace all alternatives.
And he has, over and over again, argued vigorously with other free software developers when he didn't believe their license was compatible with the GPL, or because they didn't give enough credit to the FSF. Remember the fight over the BSD advertising clause, or the "GNU/Linux" broadside?